


schrödinger's boyfriend

by nonamebut



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Childhood Friends, Gen, Implied Past Astraphobia, Introspection, Mutual Pining, prerelationship markhyuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-06
Updated: 2019-10-06
Packaged: 2020-11-26 01:46:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20922131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonamebut/pseuds/nonamebut
Summary: Mark views the past decade of his life from a different perspective.





	schrödinger's boyfriend

"This is _homophobia_," Mina cries, shaking an accusing finger in Minho's general direction. The last time she looked this distressed was when the tiny dumpling stand at the corner of the campus cafeteria closed down two months ago.

It's amazing how Minho merely blinks at her, unmoved and unafraid in the face of the acting department's most compelling student since Kim Sejeong.

"Without any evidence you instantly assume that Mark—" here, Mina yanks Mark forward, shaking his arm angrily as Mark is stunned into being manhandled "—my super gay and super _taken_ gay best friend is my boyfriend, while you can't even believe that I have an actual girlfriend when I tell it to you myself?"

In a normal conversation, the _Wait, Mina, what?_ would come from Minho, but it's Mark who ends up blurting it out. "I'm your super gay, super taken best friend and nobody bothered to tell me?"

Mina breaks character to pout at Mark. "Are you saying you're _not_ my best friend?"

"God, no. That's not the part I was trying to correct." He reaches out to tuck some stray hair behind her ear and _oh_ , is that why people think they're together? He's about to proclaim that he's her _super gay, super single best friend_, but Mina levels Minho with her dramatics once more.

"Right, right, yeah, you're bi, whatever! Still gay." Mark tries to protest again but Mina shushes him. "The point is that Minho is—is—"

Minho's facial expression still doesn't change. "Think about your next words carefully, Kang Mina." His deadpan tone doesn't mesh well with how awkwardly phrased his words are. It almost makes him sound kind of… ominous? Suddenly, Mark remembers that rumor he heard from Jaehyun when they hung out at the gym last Friday.

(_Don't mess with Chan's boyfriend_ , Jaehyun had leaned in with a conspiratorial twinkle in his eye. _Not just because Chan would hear about it, but because there's something weird about him. He's not of this world._

At the time Mark was too focused on getting his weekly cardio done but now he realizes his big mistake.)

"Do you even have any other same age friends you can actually date?" None of the two freshmen say anything; perhaps responding would give away too much.

How does Minho even _know_ about their friend group? ( _Lee knows_ , Jaehyun's voice echoes in Mark's head. _Lee knows everything._)

"Yeonjung doesn't count because everyone knows she's as good as taken. Everyone adores Dawon too much to make a move on that girl."

Mina and Mark stare at each other in horror.

"Guys," Professor Minseok cuts in with a stern look. The three of them jump apart from where they've been crowding at the corner of the classroom. "Try not to get too rowdy, it's not even eight am."

"Sorry, sir." They all chorus, wilting at the uncharacteristic scolding.

When the youthful, normally excitable theology professor just chuckles tiredly, the shared guilt only intensifies. "Just hand in your weekly journals of thanks and we can get this show on the road, yeah? Let's finish this dumb floating class early."

Oof. Mina makes eye contact with Mark and mouths _rough night?_ as they scramble back to their seats and retrieve their assignments.

Mark just shakes his head and makes an effort to participate more than usual in today's discussion, temporarily forgetting Minho's strange assumption and Mina's not so accurate defense, letting the lecture soak up all his attention.

—

Before the class ends and all the students disperse, Mina gets Yeeun from the broadcasting org to use her MC voice to ask everyone to stay behind. Mark shares a glance with delayed senior Seongwu when Yeeun says, "Mina's got an announcement to make!"

"Alright?" Professor Minseok laughs awkwardly. "Let's hear it, then."

Mina makes her way to the front of the classroom with even, heavy steps. "Everybody." She lifts her hands, gesturing towards the seven (7) people in the room. "I've called your attention because it seems to me that there has been a misunderstanding. Mark and I..." Somehow Mina's voice echoes. "... are not dating."

"You're not?" Yeeun clears her throat and repeats herself in her normal tone. "You guys aren't dating? I'm so sorry for assuming..."

Mark gives the upperclassman a nervous smile. "It's okay."

Meanwhile, Mina continues to go off. "Minho!" More accused pointing. The attention of someone in the room other than Mark must give her courage because she's fully returned to her crusade to get back at Minho. "If only you apologized for your behavior like Yeeun did, in a very sincere manner, then I will let this all go without any consequences."

"To be fair," Lucas pipes up from his seat behind Mark, "I would have assumed that you were dating if I didn't already know how you guys were from high school."

"See?" When Minho smiles his closed lipped smile, Mark is abruptly reminded of that Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland.

There's a loud sigh and everyone's eyes are pulled towards their professor, who's now sitting at the side of his desk with a very familiar looking blue notebook in his hands. "I actually thought Mark and Mina were dating—" ("— Sir?!") "—but not each other."

"... Could I read this aloud, Mark?"

Mark shrugs. He never writes anything inappropriate or sensitive on their weekly journals, anyway.

Professor Minseok takes a breath. "From yesterday's log. Donghyuck and I went to visit the site of one of his old houses yesterday. Though he only lived in it for a month, I still remember how the windows creaked incessantly, from the time he helped me cram for that Biology final I was so worried about in freshman year. Even though it must have been hard to always accommodate me, I'm very thankful that I have such a reliable best friend. I hope that one day, for all the times he needed to move and uproot his life, he finds something constant to hold on to."

The room is so quiet that even the soft flip of a page is heard so very clearly. "A random day from last week. I learned a song on the guitar for Donghyuck today and he seemed very happy when I tried playing it in front of him. He's been looking pretty tired recently, but when he opened his mouth to sing, it was like he wasn't bothered by work or school at all. I'm grateful that something as comforting as music exists, to soothe us when we're not feeling our best."

"And the week before that, and the month before that. Donghyuck this, Donghyuck that."

Mina whistles. "Wow. You'd think it would be me waxing poetic in my notebook about Hyeyeon since we got together recently, but no honeymoon phase can ever match up to that level of... obsession."

"I'm not obsessed," Mark snaps. Wait. "Wait, I'm not even—"

A hand suddenly clasps his own, warm and soft. "Mark, I'm so sorry." Minho, for the first time since Mark met him at the start of the academic term, looks absolutely morose. "I didn't mean to offend you."

There's no opportunity for Mark to even explain himself, because then Mina launches into another tirade against Minho, upset and annoyed that the upperclassman only ever seem to pick on her.

—

"Why did you let people think I'm with Donghyuck?" Mark asks when they're sitting at one of the higher floors of the campus library. "You know we're not actually dating."

To her credit, Mina actually looks guilty. She twirls a bunch of hair with her pen, a habit that Mark never had the heart to call her out for. "I know. I'm sorry... I just got really annoyed. The way he said it reminded me of how those people from before would make fun of us."

Mark thinks back to that time in their second year of high school, when some jerk upperclassmen tried picking on Yoojung and Doyeon when they first got together. This was back when Mina was a lot more hotheaded, more likely to angrily call out people when they were doing something that just wasn't right.

It's not like Mark can say anything about it when he was so much like her himself. You know, fire sign solidarity—or whatever Renjun claimed it was whenever Mina scolded the younger dance club members when they acted up, and whenever Mark went total leader mode all those times Chenle got Jisung into trouble.

He still remembers the day they both called up to the principal's office after their homeroom teacher caught them arguing with the upperclassmen right in the middle of the hallway, their faces flushed and hands shaking.

Mark had been very unapologetic about everything; the only thing that could make him regret what he had said was the way that Donghyuck had looked when he found out, nervous and near tears. _I thought you actually got into a fist fight. I was so worried, and for what?_

"Mark." Mina clears her throat, lets go of her hair. Another thing she shares with Mark is the way they need time to think, to sort through the mess in their heads.

"You know, you guys could be, right?"

It's not what Mark had been expecting her to say at all. "Could be what?"

"You know exactly what I mean. You saw how everyone reacted. Everyone would be okay with it..."

"Is that why you did it then?" Mark looks down at his notes, full of sure lines and painstaking diagrams. "To show me that it would be accepted? I don't understand why you needed to do that... you already know I'm, like... not homophobic or closeted..."

"Nooo, that's different." Mina gasps. "Wait, does this mean you don't forgive me?"

Mark rolls his eyes. "I already forgave you. You just never answered my question." He hates how his voice turns a little desperate. "Why did you do it?"

"Oh." When Mina laughs—honest to God laughs—the weird tension building up around the two finally fizzles out. "Oh, I—I just wasn't thinking, I guess. I just thought it would be more convincing if I said we both had significant others." Typical Mina bluff. "I wasn't even thinking of Donghyuck at all, at the time."

"Man," says Mark. "We really suck at communicating."

Mina laughs even harder. Mark throws his jacket at her in warning before they get kicked out of the library for the third time this term.

"Aw, Mark," she says, voice muffled by fabric. She clutches the oversized hoodie even closer to her. "Sucks for us and Hyeyeon."

"... and, if you just gave it a shot, would suck for Do—"

"I will end you, Kang Mina." Mark can be an actor, too. He can be dramatic. Summoning all his memories of Minho and his effective threatening strategies to mind, he delivers a performance worthy of an Oscar. "Think carefully about what you will say next."

"Mark _gay_." Mina throws the jacket back to distract Mark, to give her a head start. She's halfway to the elevator before Mark can even stand up from his chair. "Donghyuck gay," she whisper shouts over her shoulder, "Markhyuck gay!"

Needless to say, when it comes to the matter of being thrown out of the library—the third time's the charm.

—

Mark comes home to a cloudy night sky and Lee Donghyuck sitting on the cement steps that lead up to his house.

And maybe thunderstorms have never been a fun ordeal for Mark, but a stormy, sad Donghyuck has always been the more—the most—worrisome thing.

"Hey." A quiet jingle of keys. "Were you waiting long?"

"Just a little, but it's fine. Welcome back, Mark."

Donghyuck seems too tired for small talk, so Mark quietly takes his hand and brings him to the kitchen so they can eat reheated leftovers together.

Mark simply drops his stuff on the living room floor for future him to worry about, while Donghyuck throws his wallet and keys on the kitchen counter, quickly checking his phone before leaving it there, too.

Donghyuck's lock screen is of a bunch of Polaroids of them and their friends over the years. Seeing the collage makes Mark really, really smile, for the first time in a long while. It's almost as if he couldn't pick which one he wanted to use.

(Which, _fair_. Donghyuck has moved around so much that he's made and left too many friends to count. Mark takes a closer look and sees that Lucas only pops up in their pictures from last year, Jaemin's missing in all their 2017 group shots—so on, so forth.

The most important observation is this: there are only two constants in these photos, one of these constants being Donghyuck, and when Mark realizes this something that feels like curiosity takes hold of his heart.

When Donghyuck shoos Mark out of the kitchen, grumbling about not wanting the house to catch on fire, Mark waits until Donghyuck's back is turned and flips his best friend's phone over.

Mark smiles even wider when his suspicions are confirmed once again. Because there Mark is, smiling and arm slung over Donghyuck's shoulders, a cute picture taken during the joint surprise birthday party for Donghyuck and Taeil earlier this year.

The one Polaroid stuck behind Donghyuck's phone is just of them.

And maybe the feeling taking hold of Mark's heart isn't curiosity after all. He quickly puts the phone back in its place before Donghyuck can whine at him.)

The house is empty apart from them; the parents are away, and Johnny rarely sleeps here nowadays. It's just Mark and Donghyuck and the age old wooden dining table, and eventually, the sound of clinking cutlery.

Still no small talk. Maybe Donghyuck was lying, earlier, about not waiting long, if he's this concentrated on his food. Donghyuck still says nothing even when Mark doesn't try to be subtle in sneaking more food on the younger's plate.

Outside, the wind picks up and rain starts to splatter onto the kitchen window. _Tap tap tap_, goes the droplets, goes the rhythm of Mark's foot against the tile. He doesn't realize he's started doing it again until Donghyuck smiles at him across the table—like clouds giving way to a small, stubborn ray of sunlight.

Still no small talk, but perhaps all this time—all these years—the two of them have been communicating in another way.

Donghyuck drags his chair over to the other side, mumbling a complaint about how cold it's been getting, nowadays.

Mark reaches out and tucks the younger boy onto his side with a very typical Mark type of nonchalance, the type that he himself has never stopped to wonder about before. He, remembering what Mina and Minho had said earlier, wonders.

He wonders what it would be like if they actually were—dating.

It wouldn't change too much, really, now that Mark thinks about it.

Donghyuck would continue to pester Mark whenever he skips too many meals, would continue to do anything to make him smile before he even realizes he's sad. And just by existing Mark would spur Donghyuck on, a worthy rival to push him to become the best he can be, someone who's never seen Donghyuck as any more or less than an equal.

They'd still be best friends. Just best friends who've acknowledged this quiet thing that hums between them.

"What are you thinking about?" Donghyuck asks, later, when their shoulders are pressed together for an impromptu movie marathon. "You're so quiet, tonight."

_You_ is too honest of an answer. Mark wants to say, _I was thinking about how you're always with me, even when you're not actually there_.

It's a line straight off those movies Donghyuck always manages to convince Mark to watch on movie nights much like this one. Mark wouldn't be surprised if he managed to actually reference one by accident.

Donghyuck would like that, wouldn't he? He does like that kind of cheesy thing, would find the sincerity of it all charming. Maybe he'd find Mark charming.

Instead, Mark just replies with a vague, but still very true, "Just the usual."

"Alright." Donghyuck doesn't push and Mark realizes he's probably not in the mood to talk about whatever's been bothering him, too.

On Mark's laptop, Meg Ryan stumbles through another vintage love story with Tom Hanks. It's an old Donghyuck favorite; he squeezes Mark's hand every time he finds something funny. Mark is happy enough that he forgets the thunder that rumbles outside.

—

Resting atop the shelf that faces Mark's bed lies all the books he read growing up, their faded spines worn and familiar. Mark is rather picky with them, as Donghyuck's always liked to tease him for, with his great need to arrange them in order of when he got them.

It's a timeline of Mark's life, in more ways than one. A few books to the left of the Harry Potter series is that middle grade book Johnny gave Mark, containing the words that inspired him to pursue medicine. Skip a few titles to the right and it's the novella Mark struggled to finish when he had that huge fight with Donghyuck a couple summers ago.

It's a map of memories that Mark often finds himself staring at in the dark, eyes adjusting the longer and longer he struggles to sleep.

His bed is getting too small for two growing boys to squish into, but tonight Donghyuck and Mark still manage to make it work. The baby blue comforter is warm, and Donghyuck spooning him makes it all the more cozier.

Anyway. It should be fairly obvious, but the cramped space isn't the thing that's been keeping Mark up.

Now that he's started, Mark just can't stop thinking about it. And for a while it made Mark almost giddy, how naturally he and his best friend seemed to fall into place, but now he's not so sure about how it makes him feel.

They already do a lot of things that people dating do, Mark decides. They might as well be dating. Lucas and Yeeun and everyone else can confirm that.

They don't kiss, sure, but that doesn't mean anything. (In Mark's mind, a voice that suspiciously sounds like Ten is going on and on about how romantic love and sexual attraction are not mutually inclusive.)

But at the end of the day, when the rain peters to a stop and the lights go off and it's time to close your eyes and sleep, whatever Ten or Lucas or Yeeun or even Minho have to say doesn't matter.

At the end of the day it's just Mark and Donghyuck, pressed together in the dark, feeling the same way about each other and somehow doing absolutely nothing and everything about it at the same time.

Because—because nothing would change if Mark says anything, but the same thing would apply in reverse, would it not? Nothing would change if Mark says nothing at all.

Somewhere on the mess that is Mark's desk, right below the shelf of books, is the journal for Professor Minseok's class. He had quickly written his good deeds and thanks for the day right before the two settled in for bed, Donghyuck's breath ghosting on his neck from where he had curled up beside him on Mark's study bench.

Surely, even Donghyuck must know of what Mark feels for him, the depth of it. He's no idiot. And he's read this very journal, and all the other journals Mark has ever kept outside of class requirements. He's seen first hand how every page Mark's ever written is inked with his name.

It makes Mark wonder even more. He thinks of Donghyuck, who shines brightly and fiercely, how Mark can't help but be pulled into his gravity. How Donghyuck must be pulled towards him in equal measure. Basic physics dictates that Donghyuck must be as, in Mina's words, obsessed with Mark.

"Donghyuck." Mark's voice cracks a little, but not just because it's been unused for a while now. "Are you awake?"

The arms wrapped around Mark tighten ever so slightly. "What's wrong?"

"... Just wanted to see if you were still alive."

Mark feels Donghyuck's snort. "Still with you," he says, indulging Mark as he always does, falling into the same routine they've been running through since even before Donghyuck started moving around.

"Me too." There's plenty more things to consider... but for now Mark settles back into habit, lets the comfort of familiarity ground him.

Maybe that's enough thinking for tonight. No more musings. Just the quiet intake of breath, the promise of what lies in dreams.

Mark's just about to let go when Donghyuck decides to edge in a final word. "Let's talk tomorrow, okay?"

Nodding shyly, Mark smiles into his pillow. "Okay, good night." A soft sigh. "I love you."

"Love you too."

Mark closes his eyes.

Tomorrow could never come, but Mark would still be okay with it.

x x

**Author's Note:**

> if you made it this far, thank you so much for reading <3 hope u had a great weekend.
> 
> not sure if i should tag this with the mh tag haha pls let me know if i should tag it anyway ;u; also i had a song rec to go with this but.. i forgot it ... *crying emoji x100* i'll just try to remember and maybe edit this tomorrow hehe good night


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